Portal 2: Review

I've been putting off this review for some time now, mainly because I realised I didn't have a huge amount to say about in a critical, let alone amusing way. Portal 2 is everything a computer game should be in the modern age.

It is perfect in almost every way, and that is a statement I used to describe the original Portal, finally the year of the cursed lacklustre sequels has been vanquished. Portal was an amazing game. When I first saw it I thought nothing of it, then a friend made me play it. He didn't say much, he just said: "Play the game through in one sitting, don't go on youtube and ruin the ending for yourself." and lent me his account. I played it through. I ended up laughing my arse off, having a fucking amazing time and generally finding my life improved at the end.

In fact, I'm going to pass this along, if you haven't got Portal, tell me, email me at:

thinkaboutmalc@hotmail.com

I have a spare copy, AND I will purchase an additional 2 copies for any individuals who have not played it. I'm deadly serious.

Now if this was made by any other developer I would have been worried by the idea of a sequel to this great game, however, we're talking about Valve, a company who in recent years have an impeccable record in games and support, just look at Team Fortress 2 a game that is constantly updated essentially free of charge (I know they have an in game store where you can buy items, but you don't have to, and in no way do you have to). They also reassured me with their masterful PR.

Valve began by bringing out a series of faux-adverts from aperture science, advertising their various products, which would be puzzle elements in the game, each of these were injected with the same comedy and excellent voice acting as Portal, so that was two points checked off. 

They also, starting in March 2010, created an ARG (Alternate reality game), a series of puzzles and cryptic clues implanted in Portal itself and media surrounding it, that snowballed until about a month before the games release, when the potato sack was released. Valve approached various indie developers and tasked them to introducing Portal elements to their games, along with potatoes and brought up a website (which is still active at http://www.aperturescience.com/glados@home/) that requested that "Testers" help re-initiate the Aperture Science facility (the setting of Portal 1/2) by playing these indie games, thereby increasing the hype of Portal 2, introducing thousands of players to these games (some of which really are excellent, I will inevitably end up review Amnesia: The Dark Descent when I stop being a coward and get over my paranoia that my housemates are going to terrify me whilst playing it, as I did to them) and also giving amazing value for money considering the low price of the pack. I was up for days, staring at this screen, playing the games and finding potatoes to get this game out as quickly as possible. It's also sad to say that I woke up at 5 in the morning the day of release (30 minutes after it was released... My body forced me up) and had completed the game 5 and a half hours later, much to the pity of my house mate and his girlfriend (They were having sex apparently, losers). 

And thus ends my journey up to the release of Portal 2, now onto the actual game. The game starts with the usual First Person game opener of teaching you how to look up and down like you're a toddler who's had a stroke, but in this case not because it has to, but as a way of poking fun at the entire system and injecting it with comedy, stating it's part of the government sanctioned mandatory aerobics. This a theme that runs through the entire game, highlighting with comedy the clichés of modern games. 

The game also expands on the excellent voice acting of the first game by voice actress and opera singer Ellen McLain, adding two big stars (or one if you're American), J. K. Simmons (of Spiderman, playing J. Jonah Jameson, and Juno) and a personal favourite of mine Stephen Merchant, playing a character similar to one of my favourite comedic characters ever, Darren Lamb from Extras, the bumbling agent to Ricky Gervais' character. 

Stephen Merchant plays Wheatley, your stalwart idiot companion for the game. He is the perfect antithesis to GLaDOS's dry, evil genius. He is bumbling, moronic, endearing and generally terrified of everything, including his own flashlight ("They told me if I ever turned this on, I would die! I don't know why they gave me half of this stuff if they didn't want me to use it.") He is such a deep, interesting character which develops through the game that it's impossible not to love him, with all of his character flaws, such as the inability to hack a security panel whilst you're looking to his constant terrified ramblings as you start to do something, immediately changing to encouragement when it turns out you were right, you don't care that he's not much help and all of his plans don't work, it's just good to have him along for the ride. Stephen Merchant's voice acting does in no small part contribute to this, rather than the flat delivery of most games today, he pours emotion into the role, with the perfect comedic timing that made Extras and The Office a hit. Plus you can't help but be endeared to a West-Country accent. 

J.K. Simmons plays the bat-shit crazy owner of Aperture in a series of prerecorded messages, detailing the downfall of Aperture. His lines are brilliant, playing the ultimate crazed millionaire. (Billionaire? I don't know) Throw in a metaphor of his life being connected with the companies and you've got yourself another interesting character that brings light to the lore of the company. 

GLaDOS makes her return, despite the fact you "killed" her in the last game, which has made her... bitter. This leads to some of the subtlest and most elaborate insults I've ever heard in a game, along with more sadistic experiments. 

And oh what experiments, the first game had a few brain teasers, especially the challenge maps. However, this new game takes it to a whole new level, with some exceedingly difficult tasks, requiring a lot of thought and practice. At a few points in the game I, with no sense of irony, sat scratching my beard (I knew I grew this for some reason) and felt like I was solving Fermat's Last Theorem. A true sense of accomplishment  washed over me whenever I finished a particularly difficult one. It was interesting watching my house mate play the game through and see how he solved certain tasks and realising the various different ways to get to the goal. It was also fun acting like some sort of enigmatic genius giving him cryptic clues. Even I felt pretentious when I proclaimed "Merlin, think in trigonometry". 

They have embellished the puzzling aspect of the game with a few new additions. These are different coloured paints that add properties to any wall they touch (bounciness, speed and the ability to place portals on the surface), hard light bridges (which gave me a Red Dwarf flash back), Aerial Faith Plates (a cartoon-esque spring board), Thermal Discouragement Beams (lasers) and the Excursion Funnel (a tractor beam made out of liquid asbestos (healthy)). These add new dimensions to the puzzles without distracting from the titles ideals. It is still definitely all about portals. 

This review is getting more and more difficult to talk about without revealing spoilers, which I definitely don't want to do, just like my approach to the first game. However the storyline is excellent, it follows quite a basic standard storyline, but with a new spin to it and some hilarious and intelligent insight into all the experiments and their purposes. The games world starts off a haggard, run down establishment but slowly evolves into a fully working, evolving environment and it's scale is staggering. The entire place is huge and you get to see a vast amount of it, it's gargantuan. You location changes through what feels like the history of Aperture and your actions feel like they are actually doing something as you witness huge events happening merely because of you. Add a ridiculous and hilarious ending (I actually told my screen to fuck off then burst into laughter) and you've got yourself a great story.

The game also comes with a excellent co-op campaign in which you and a friend play the part of robotic test subjects who are treated like rubbish because... well you're robotic test subjects. This campaign is develishly difficult, but this could merely be due to the fact I was playing it with a moron, apparently I was bellowing at him whilst playing it... I don't remember, all I remember is it being very difficult and laughing a lot. 

If I had to complain about the game, it could use some additional features, some challenge maps or the ability to jump directly into a test, but these are petty gripes that don't really matter. People have complained about the loading times, but to be honest I didn't notice, I think my brain was glad for the respite. The campaign isn't the longest one, but who cares, it was 5 hours of my life where I had a great time. It was 5 hours of gaming that has been better than any other game I've played before. It was the original, short Portal, with a more robust and embellished storyline, more diverse puzzling and more great voice acting. They didn't reinvent the game, they took what worked and made it bigger and better. 

Computer games are always getting the stick for not being an art form, well someone better tell Valve that, because Portal 2 is up there with some of the greats.